


Tony's Heart

by BromeliadLucy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:02:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22040911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BromeliadLucy/pseuds/BromeliadLucy
Summary: A little post-Endgame catharsis I wrote to salve my own broken heart...
Relationships: Tony Stark & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Tony's Heart

If you need proof that Tony Stark had a heart, you never knew him at all. He had too much heart. That’s why I came into existence; that’s why he could be so hurt by the people he loved; why he could be so damaged by his past. And that’s why I did what I did. And I don’t regret a bit of it. Tony Stark had a heart all right, one big enough for the whole world, but he liked to hide it behind that veneer of shallow ego, and behind the Iron Man. If you’ve got a heart as big and soft as Tony’s, you need to protect it.

So you’ll remember the whole business around Ultron. How Bruce and Tony made the shield around the world that, as it turned out, decided humanity was self-destructive and should be wiped out? How Ultron was made using the power of the Mind Stone, and had to be defeated, but that shifted everyone’s opinion of the Avengers, led to Civil War… all that. You remember? I don’t. I don’t remember because I wasn’t around then. I was made, after. After Ultron had been born and then killed by the Mind Stone wielded by his own… son? Brother? Vision, Tony didn’t give up on his idea of protecting the world after that though. If anything, he wanted it more. He never told anyone about the panic attacks, or the PTSD he suffered from, but with every attack that the Avengers dealt with, they got worse, until it felt as if the whole world was a threat, and there was no safety left.

He didn’t give up on his plan. He made me. Unlike Vision, I’m not purple, and I can’t fly. I don’t have a stone embedded in my head, and I seem… normal. But I’m not. I’m not human for a start. Thanks to the Cradle, I can pass for a person, but my flesh was created through science, not love. I’m imbued with the power of the stones though. The Mind Stone was used, through Vision, who knew what Tony was up to, but was reassured that Tony was creating something less chaotic. Vision took his time, weighing it up, but decided on balance that he could trust Tony. The maths for my existence added up, the equations came out in favour of a second try, learning from the success of Vision and the failure of Ultron.

I had to be kept secret though. No telling the team, not Bruce, not even Pepper. I officially joined up through a scholarship, one of Tony’s. My presence in the Tower and the Compound was explained away as an internship, an assistant, a coffee-fetching gofer, until I was too familiar to need explanations. Nobody knew I knew Tony before that. I was simply the latest in a line of fresh faced new bodies to be trained in all things saving-the-world. There were a fair few of us then, before the Avengers fell apart and suddenly nobody had the heart to recruit new cannon fodder.

Tony didn’t acknowledge me in public, or private. He’d made me, but now he was afraid. I could feel him watching me, not able to trust that I wouldn’t go the way of Ultron. I was just another weight on his chest, breaking his soft heart into pieces. He was afraid to tell anyone about me, afraid to try and destroy me, afraid to let me live a life in peace. Eventually it seemed kinder to remove myself from the Compound, absence not making the heart grow fonder, but at least making it less anxious. So I just left one day, moving out and moving on, although I couldn’t break the ties that bound me to them, particularly him, my creator. I monitored channels, followed news report, kept my logins current so that I could at least have that one last connection.

Then Thanos came, and the world’s heart broke. News coverage was limited, because half the reporters had gone, and those that remained were left reaching for loved ones who weren’t there, too busy breaking down to share the news with a world that was too bereft to watch. The Avengers’ comms channels were mostly silent, there was little to report and at first they were all together, clinging on to the ones that had remained. 

I hadn’t been snapped, of course, because I wasn’t, technically, alive, so I’d watched everyone I cared for suffer for five years as the world grieved, and tried to move on. But it couldn’t. There was too much loss, it was impossible to comprehend. People stopped speaking, afraid to ask their friends about their husbands, wives, children, because they didn’t know who was left. Friendships broke down, when survivor’s guilt hit those who were here, and angry jealousy hit those who had lost everything. Babies and children, left alone when their parents had vanished, cried in empty houses until they went quiet. Time passed, and it should have eased, but the weight was too much for people to keep moving. Gradually people returned to work and school, but it was as if they were moving through shadows, and there was very little joy to be found.

So when the channels I monitored showed what was happening, I knew I had to be there, at the last. I saw the schematics for the time device on Tony’s computer, and understood what he’d made before he did. The power in me from the infinity stones registered the arrival of each stone into our time, and I could feel myself become stronger as each stone appeared. I knew that meant Thanos would be aware of them too. I felt Natasha’s death on Vormir as if I’d seen her fall myself, knew when Clint held the Soul Stone in his hands, and felt it cry out with the weight of her soul. And I knew, when someone put the stones together, and snapped their fingers. I didn’t know then it was Bruce. Gentle, quiet Bruce, whose only aim was to bring peace, but who was always destined to share his life with a force of chaos. I felt the snap, and the power of the stones washed over me so that I staggered, then I ran to the window and looked out and saw them return.

You were there, you saw it, whether you were one of the returned or one of the ones who’d stayed. The pandemonium and confusion as people who had felt only a blink of time, suddenly stood in demolished buildings and in front of people who’d aged as if before their eyes. Cars screeched and crashed as the vanished reappeared. Parents, who’d last seen their children as babies, blinked and saw them suddenly as children, crying in fear at these forgotten parents. It wasn’t something I could concern myself with. Let them explain to each other, I had no time to waste in wondering how humanity would explain itself, how families would rebuild and the universe would breath out to accommodate all this unexpected life.

I felt it when Thanos arrived. Like a punch to the stomach, it left me winded. I was close by already, I’d never gone far from Tony’s side even when he didn’t want me around, and although the streets were filled with crying and laughter and madness, my car made quick work of the route through to the Avengers Compound. Or to where it had been. It was a wasteland by the time I got there. Thanos’s army had destroyed buildings and land as far as I could see. What had been a green paradise was blackened by fire and salted with the Titan’s hatred.

I saw the battle play out in my mind, even as my eyes tried to take it in. I could feel the stones as they moved around, and could sense the battle shifting back and forth. Captain America’s stand against Thanos for a moment seemed as if it would win, but it wasn’t enough, not until portals started opening and I saw hordes arrive, hordes from Earth, Asgard, everywhere, to defeat Thanos for once and for all.

That was my cue. I could feel the stones moving, carried by heroes further and further across the battlefield and it seemed the tides were turning in our favour, until that final moment. Thanos seized the gauntlet and was faced by only Tony. Tony, the man they said had no heart. The billionaire philanthropist playboy, the man who let himself be a joke because to show his heart was to risk it being broken. He’d let Pepper in, and Morgan had opened him up further, but when he thought Cap had betrayed him, he’d felt that wound deeply. And here he was, nanotech stealing the stones before Thanos knew. I knew, of course, I could tell the moment they changed hands. The stones sparkled in my soul as they sent out their tendrils to seek out the mind of their new owner. I was running faster than I ever had now, to reach him. I wanted to take the gauntlet from him, would rip his hand off if I had to, just to save him, but I didn’t make it. I felt the power surge as he snapped, and all I managed to do was to grab hold of his other hand, as tightly as I could. His head turned towards mine, and I wondered if he would remember how the Guardians had survived the force of the Power Stone by standing together, but his mind was being torn open by the force he’d unleashed, and I don’t even know if he recognised me.

I channelled the power as much as I could, through me, even as I saw the first of Thanos’s soldiers start to fade to dust and blow away. I opened my mind and my heart and my cells and my soul to the stones and sang to them until they were diverted from their destruction of Tony and sent their power towards me. I felt them dance in my atoms as they broke me apart and revelled in their own potency.

I didn’t know much more than that, afterwards. Not as myself. My consciousness vanished back into the stones that had created it so that I am no longer _me,_ but a part of everything and nothing at once. But there is still a cord that binds me to Tony Stark, even as I straddle the universe in the stones.

I saw Tony hold on to me on the battlefield, as the armies faded away and the birds began to sing again in the sudden silence. His right arm was burnt and broken, and would never heal again, but his heart kept beating, as he held me in his left arm. I saw him whisper to me, apologies that were unneeded and promises that he couldn’t keep. I saw Pepper hold him, and tell him it was OK, and that he could rest now, the world was saved. I saw Peter tell him that they’d won, and Tony looked up at that, as if he’d forgotten that there was a fight at all. He cried when he saw Steve, who knelt next to him, and held on as if he wouldn’t let go.

So don’t tell me Tony Stark didn’t have a heart. I am the power at the heart of the universe, and the soul of every living thing. I could tear apart your mind and turn time inside out, I can move reality as easily as I can move through space, and wherever and whenever and whoever I am, I will burn into the universe that Tony Stark has a heart. His heart made me, and saved the world. And now although his heart hurts, that I died, so many died, I watch through time and space and souls that his heart has a long journey still to make. I see him teaching Morgan, I see him growing old with Pepper, I see him holding his grandchildren. And when his heart does end, I’ll be there waiting. 


End file.
